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Changes in Work Values Under the Influence of International Migration

Published onMay 09, 2022
Changes in Work Values Under the Influence of International Migration
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Abstract

Subjective importance of work is core to work values and subject to change in recent decades, as a decreasing salience is being noticed in post-modern ages (Halman, 1999). This happens in a Europe that undergoes a process of individualization that includes changes in work values (Halman, 1996), and in which migrations bring people from one societal context to another, including in such way the change of the culture to which they are exposed (Rudnev, 2014; Voicu, 2014). This chapter shows that migration comes with a shift in value orientations, that leads to mixing the values in the country of origin with the ones in the host society, which become more important. The results bring support for both the socialization hypothesis (Inglehart, 1997) and the institutionalization assumption (Arts, 2011), showing their complementarity with respect to work values. In contrast to the culture of work in the society of origin, the culture of work in the host society proves to be more influential for immigrants. A process of acculturation but not assimilation is therefore observed because both cultures continue to be influential.


21.1 Introduction

The literature on value formation and change was dominated for more than half a century by the assumption that values are stable features (Jagodzinski, 2004). Mannheim’s (1952) generational replacement explanation and Ryder’s (1965) focus on cohorts provided grounds for Inglehart’s (1997) socialization hypothesis to become core of his postmaterialist theory. Conditions during early years are said to be key for value formation, and individuals tend to maintain their values over the entire life. This strong assumption is considered as given by most of the literature devoted to defining social values (Featherstone, 2011; Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004; Jagodzinski, 2004; Van Deth & Scarbrough, 1994).

However, assimilation theories, irrespectively if in their classic, neoclassic, or segmented versions, claim that immigrants daily interact with the dominant culture and acquire new ways of doing, memories, behaviours, attitudes, and values specific to the dominant group (Esser, 2010; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). This involves a strong assumption related to value change in adult life. The idea is also to be found among scholarship of social values and/or social change. Ogburn’s (1957) macro-level lag theory is such an example. Inkeles’s (1969: 213-214) view of the factory as school for modernization stresses the informal learning that occurs at the workplace and in school as one of the drivers of modernization. Gundelach (1994) coins institutions as containers of value patterns to be internalized by immigrants. This institutionalization assumption in value formation (Arts, 2011) is also to be found in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2001). The strength of contextual factors in value change is also underlined by the regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 2011) developed in psychology, as well as by Inglehart and Baker (2000) and Inglehart and Welzel (2005) who show that values are subject to change when experiencing high inflation or persistent economic recession. As Welzel (2007) puts it: culture is adaptive to contextual changes.

This chapter focuses on the two compelling hypotheses of socialization and institutionalization and employs international migration as ‘natural experiment’ (Dinesen, 2013) to test for their complementarity. I focus on work values, which are core to value change in recent decades (Halman, 1999; Halman & Müller, 2006; Halman & Gelissen, 2019; Kraaykamp, Cemalcilar, & Tosun, 2019; Voicu, 2008). Changes are reported for work orientations towards both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (de Witte, Halman & Gelissen, 2004), as well as for the overall importance of work (Halman, 1999). While centrality of work remains strong, its salience knows enough variation across Europe to be noted (Halman, 1999). In this chapter, I focus on importance of work. I expect that immigrants’ work values depend on the work culture in the society of origin, as stated by the socialization assumption. In addition, these values should also depend on the work culture in the country of current residence, as stated by the institutionalization assumption.

To test these hypotheses, I use data from the European Values Study 20082009 (EVS, 2008), collected before the global economic recession at the end of 2000s, which may have acted as a game changer, and before the refugee crises, which brought immigrant issues on the top of the European agenda.

 

21.2 Data and Methods

The EVS 2008-2009 questionnaire included a battery of questions tapping work values. Respondents expressed their agreement on 5-points scales with four statements: (1) It is humiliating to receive money without having to work for it; (2) People who don’t work become lazy; (3) Work is a duty toward society; and (4) Work should always come first, even if it means less free time. Previous research showed that the battery has full metric invariance, but no scalar invariance (Dülmer, 2011). For simplicity, I use as dependent variable the mean value of responses to these 4 items. The main independent variables are the country-averages for the “work is a duty” question, computed for the country of origin and for the host society. These averages are indicators of the culture of work in the countries of birth and current residence. The EVS 2008-2009 sample includes 6,297 foreign-born respondents, from 153 countries of origin and living in 47 host societies. To increase the number of countries of origin for which information on work culture is available, I computed the average for “work as duty” in the WVS 2005-2009 sample. However, the mean estimates for the EVS and WVS samples are not fully comparable. For instance, in Spain, Turkey, Poland, and Romania, the 95% confidence intervals estimated in the two surveys are not overlapping. Therefore, I choose three different strategies for the analyses: The first set of models employs cases from the EVS sample only, and restricts the sample to 5,087 cases of European born immigrants with full information available (47 origin countries and 47 host societies). The second set of models considers only those born in countries included in the WVS sample, which leaves only 2,270 cases for analysis (40 origin countries and 46 host societies). The third set of models employs all available cases and uses average pooled indicators for the countries of origin where two surveys are available. For these models, listwise deletion leads to 5,444 cases with full information available (70 origin countries and 47 host societies).

The cases under analysis are individuals, nested on the one hand in their host societies, and on the other in their societies of origin. This double hierarchical nature of data leads to the need for analysing cross-classified multilevel models which are estimated using lmer in R. Control variables at the individual level include education, age, age squared, female, life satisfaction, marital status, number of children, subjective health, and employment status (measured by no work, parttime work, fulltime work). This enables us to find out whether immigrants internalize the values from the host society and/or reflect the ones from the country of birth beyond their individual characteristics. Furthermore, I control for unemployment rate, GDP per capita, and GDP growth in the host country (all World Bank Indicators) and for the index of democracy compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. I also control for the unemployment rate in the country of origin. All these macro-level indicators are computed for the year of survey. The unemployment rate is likely to affect work values by putting or releasing pressure in the labour market; GDP is related to the general economic development of the country, while GDP growth gives an indication of the current insecurity in the respective society.

The above-described models are repeated in two different scenarios. First, a cross-level interaction between the work culture in the country of origin and the time spent in the host society (in years) is included, with the expectation that the latter acts as moderator for the impact of the first. In other words, one may expect that the values taken from the country of origin become less influential with the time spent in the host society. Second, the models are repeated by including the natives (i.e. those born in the host societies) from the samples, in order to contrast immigrants to these non-migrants. Please note that for natives, the indicator for work culture is identical for both host and origin country.

 

21.3 Results

Across Europe, considering the host culture, there is a stronger orientation to consider work important in Eastern and Southern countries, with values decreasing towards the North and West. This is compliant with previous findings (Voicu, 2008), confirming that work loses its societal salience when entering late modernity.

Table 21.1 introduces the results from the first set of models, showing the coefficients for the macro-level effects only. The total variation between respondents with regard to orientations towards work, based on the values of ICC (not shown in table), can be decomposed in roughly 15% between origin countries, 8% between host societies, and 77% at the individual level. This implies that there is enough difference induced by host societies and countries of origin to justify being inspected.

The results show that except for the country-level indicators for work culture, no other macro-level predictor is significant in these models. Apparently, the two indicators for work culture, one located at the level of the host society and the other for the country of origin, are strong enough to overwrite any other influence that may derive from the indicators of economic and political conditions tapped by GDP, unemployment, or the index of democracy.

Table 21.1 Models without cross-level interactions, natives excluded: effects of  macro-level variables

 

 

Model 1: data for country of origin = EVS2008
(n= 5087)

Model 2: data for country of origin = WVS2005
(n=2720)

Model 3: pooled data on country of origin
(n=5444)

HOST  SOCIETY

Work culture

0.63***

0.66***

0.59***

Unemployment rate

-0.01

-0.02

0.00

ln(GDP per capita)

0.00

-0.13

-0.01

GDP Growth Rate

-0.01

-0.02

-0.01

Index of Democracy

-0.02

-0.02

-0.01

COUNTR OF ORIGIN

Work culture

0.18

0.34**

0.15†

Unemployment rate

0.00

0.01

0.00

***p<.001; **p<.01; *p<.05; †p<.10. Models include controls at individual level for education, age, age squared, female, life satisfaction, marital status, number of children, subjective health, employment status.

 

The impact of the work culture existing in the host society is stable across models. One point increase in its values leads to about 0.6 points increase in the values of individual orientations towards work (scale ranges from 1-5). This means that in a country that values work, immigrants will also tend to value work more than in a country that puts less emphasis on work. Since the scales of the two indicators are identical, the effect is quite strong, showing that acquiring values from the host society is important. This supports the institutionalization assumption.

The impact of the work culture in the country of origin is weaker and turns insignificant in the model that employs EVS data only. In the models that use only the immigrants from WVS countries (model 2) or pools together all immigrants (model 3), despite that the point estimate for culture of origin is smaller than the one for the host country, the 95% confidence intervals overlap, showing that the impact of the work culture in the country of origin is not so much different compared to the one from the host.

Table 21.2 Models with cross-level interactions: effects of macro-level variables

 

Model 1: data for country of origin = EVS2008 (n= 5063)

Model 2: data for country of origin = WVS2005 (n=2720)

Model 3: pooled data on country of origin (n=5420)

HOST SOCIETY

Work culture

1.03***

0.60***

0.67 ***

Unemployment rate

0.00

0.00

-0.02

ln(GDP/capita)

0.02

0.01

-0.13

GDP Growth Rate

0.00

-0.01

-0.02

Index of Democracy

-0.01

-0.01

-0.03

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

Work culture

0.05

0.20+

0.34+

Unemployment rate

-0.01

0.00

0.00

<time spent in the host society> *<work culture in country of origin>

0.00

0.00

0.00

***p<.001; **p<.01; *p<.05; †p<.10. Models include controls at individual level for education, age, age squared, female, life satisfaction, marital status, number of children, subjective health, employment status.

 

Table 21.2 shows the same models but adds the cross-level interaction effect. The expectation was that time spent in the host society will reduce the impact of the heritage brought by the work values internalized during early childhood. However, it turns out that there is not such an effect. Moreover, the impact of the indicator for the host culture remains significant and unchanged, with a notable increase in the first model employing EVS data only.

Table 21.3 changes the set up and introduces the natives into the analysis. When using them as control group, the impact of the work culture in the host society remains unchanged. The impact of the culture of origin turns significant. In the models from Table 21.3, the estimated 95% confidence intervals for the two work cultures do not overlap in the same model, indicating that the impact of the host culture is stronger as compared to the one from the country of origin.

Table 21.3 Models without cross-level interactions, natives included: effects of  macro-level variables

 

 

Model 1: data for country of origin = EVS2008 (n= 63226)

Model 2: data for country of origin = WVS2005 (n=21832)

Model 3: pooled data on country of origin (n=63637)

HOST SOCIETY

Work culture

0.63***

0.66***

0.59***

Unemployment rate

0.00

-0.02

0.00

ln(GDP/capita)

0.04

-0.13

-0.01

Index of Democracy

-0.04

-0.02

-0.01

GDP Growth Rate

0.00

-0.02

-0.01

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

Work culture

0.14*

0.34**

0.15+

Unemployment rate

0.00

0.01

0.00

***p<.001; **p<.01; *p<.05; †p<.10. Models include controls at individual level for education, age, age squared, female, life satisfaction, marital status, number of children, subjective health, employment status.

 

21.4 Conclusion and Discussion

The results show moderate support for the socialization hypothesis. Values in the country-of-origin matter, but the effect is less stable and not as strong. In other words, it is likely that individuals adhere to values internalized during early socialization, but there is less proof in this respect as compared to the acculturation of norms that they find in the country of residence. Perhaps better measurement is needed. The data do not allow to exactly determine how much time immigrants actually spent in the country of birth. We only know when they arrived in the country of current residence, but their life-course may include multiple migrations. In other words, the exposure to the work values in the country of origin might have been low from the very beginning.

Controlling for the time spent in the host society is only partly solving the issue. The other unseen part in the models is the current exposure to the culture in the country of origin. In fact, on the one hand, the current values of the country-of-origin indicator show how work values are today, not at the time when the nowadays immigrants lived there. Since work patterns and work salience changed a lot in recent decades, it might be a very weak indicator for early socialization. Controlling for age and contrasting to immigrants from other societies and natives partly smooths the imprecision, but still it remains the question whether different societies of origin changed their work culture faster or slower than others. On the other hand, there is the need to control for current contact with the country of origin. In a transnational world, one can expect constant interactions with friends and relatives which were left behind, exposure to media and social media, recurring visits home and from home, and even embeddedness in a network of immigrants from the same origin that persists over time. In the sense of the institutionalization assumption, this would mean that culture of origin could produce institutionalization effects as well. A control for present interactions with the country of origin is required, but existing surveys do not provide such information.

Finally, there is a limitation to the impact of the host society: it might be the case that a selection effect is present. Immigrants might have chosen countries of destination according to their preferences related to work culture, which might lead to endogeneity in assessing causation between the host-culture indicator and individual value orientations towards work. However, controlling for a variety of host-origin pairs should have at least partly removed the risk to wrongly interpret the results in this respect.

With these cautions in mind, the main message of this chapter remains that individuals have a strong embeddedness of their work values in the work values of the host countries, and there is moderate support to believe that they combine such influence with the one from their countries of origin. The effect remains unchanged irrespective of the specifications in the models that were introduced above, and it also remains the same when changing the dependent variable to single items such as “work is a duty” or “work comes first” (models not shown). The remarkable robustness of the findings to measurement, modelling, or sample selection confirms the institutionalization assumption with respect to work values. People derive their own values from existing societal norms and behave accordingly. Such results suggest that in a global world it matters more where one lives than where one is born. Processes of acculturation and assimilation also go against the concerns of anti-immigration activists and xenophobes claiming that incoming migrant flows may severely affect the national culture.

Similar results were observed in case of civic participation (Voicu, 2014) and basic human values (Rudnev, 2014). For researchers in the sociology of values, such results push towards reconsidering the strength of the socialization assumption and urge for integrating an explanation that considers complementarity with the institutionalization assumption. For migration studies, the results show that assimilation still occurs, but it should be reinvented in the sense that, at least culturally, it actually leads to a mixture of host-origin values.

Considering practical implications within the work domain, employers may expect their immigrant employees to display rather similar values as their native counterparts, with a pinch of their culture of origin. If this proves valid for other traits beyond the importance of work, this means that employees will build on a common ground provided by the host culture and add to it flavors from the culture in the country of origin. Managing such mixture in a creative way may increase profit and efficacy. Ignoring it through imposing a normative approach to work may lead to frustrations and potential disruptions within organizations.

Acknowledgements: The work on this chapter was supported by grant GAR-UM-2019XI-5.3-9 from Romanian Academy.

 

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